Uncanny Avengers vol. 4: Avenge the Earth

I guess I stuck to my guns through sheer force of inertia.  Yeah, I would’ve bought this volume in hardcover if I had found it on sale, but that didn’t happen.  So nearly a year after I read the previous volume, the final act of Rick Remender’s epic storyline finally arrived at my door.  Was it worth the wait?  Yes it was.  Remender and artist Daniel Acuna do deliver a satisfying climax, but it’s one that gets by on spectacle more than cleverness.

After failing to stop the destruction of Earth by the Celestial Exitar, engineered by the Apocalypse Twins Eimin and the (now-deceased) Uriel, all of mutanity has been resettled on Planet X.  Everyone’s pretty happy with the setup, particularly after Eimin convinced everyone that the Celestial’s actions were the Avengers’ fault, save for the surviving members of the Unity Squad who know what really went down.  Havok, Wasp, Beast, and Thor have been working to find a way to destroy the tachyon dam which is keeping the current timeline from being reset.  As the volume opens, they finally succeed in bringing it down.  The only thing is that instead of the Immortus-led army they expected to arrive after it was destroyed, Kang shows up with some of Marvel “history’s greatest villains” in tow.  It’s all good though — Kang’s got a plan!

Now we all know how trustworthy characters who also refer to themselves as “The Conqueror” are, right?  In true villain fashion Kang offers the Unity Squad a devil’s bargain in the form of the assistance of himself and his team.  Even though it’s the ONLY WAY, Havok still balks at this and Kang then kidnaps his daughter (that he had with Wasp) and now the game is afoot.  It’s a well-worn setup that Remender plays pretty straight and it’s the volume’s main failing.  Yes, Kang is a bad guy.  Yes, he’s scheming to use this all to his advantage.  Yes, our heroes are right not to trust him.  What they’re not smart enough to do is think through this plan he’s given them and figure out how to turn it to their advantage.  It’s frustrating because, given the number of heroes involved in this story, someone should have realized either just what Kang was up to or that they needed to find some way to out-think him here.  They needed to be more clever and that’s what was missing here.

As I said before, however, this volume makes up for that oversight in spectacle.  The opening chase sequence, as Magneto’s New And Improved Brotherhood of Evil Mutants X-Force chases Havok and Wasp through the utopian Planet X is a riveting action sequence choreographed by Remender and brought to life by Acuna.  We get plenty of other memorable sequences here, from the small-scale — the ruling council’s fight in the Unity Squad’s hideout — to the large as Havok and Sunfire throw down against Kang on Exitar as it bleeds cosmic god juice.  It’s big, epic superhero storytelling that isn’t part of a giant universe-wide crossover.  You don’t see stuff like this that often in a Marvel comic and even if it took two volumes to get to this point, the buildup was certainly worth it.

It’s not all about the action, as Remender finds a way to tie off a few plot threads he has set up over the course of this storyline.  Rogue and the Scarlet Witch have a bit of a reconciliation that is deliciously awkward as it plays off the fact that the former killed the latter in the previous volume.  Havok and Wasp’s relationship jumps a few steps as their daughter is introduced here and plays a key role in the events of this volume.  Even though I wished that the heroes had been more clever in dealing with Kang, there’s no denying that Havok’s decision to fight Kang regardless of the consequences is a powerful one that leads to the volume’s one real moment of tragedy.

I also want to commend the writer for finding a fairly straightforward way to get around the whole “reset button” issue of this storyline.  After Rogue, Scarlet Witch, Captain America, and billions of humans on Earth were killed in the previous volume, it was clear that this status quo would be reversed at some point.  Time travel is involved, naturally, but all of the events of this storyline are preserved in the memories of those who lived through it.  There is no waving of the hands to indicate that “this never happened” for these characters.  They lived through it all and will have to deal with the trauma of these events going forward.  Except Wolverine because he’s dead now.

It’s not everything it could’ve been, but “Avenge the Earth” still manages to stick the landing.  I can’t remember the last time I read a story of this length in an ongoing Marvel title, so the fact that it turned out to be worthwhile is something that Remender, Acuna, and the other artists who contributed to it can be proud of.  Granted, there’s a lot to unpack after these eighteen issues and I understand that will be dealt with in the first issue of the next volume.  It would’ve been nice to have had that included here, but I’ll get around to reading it at some point.  This will also likely stand as Remender’s definitive work on the title, unless you consider “Axis” to be the next arc.  Given that the creator recently announced that he was quitting Marvel to focus on his creator-owned work, it’s a nice bit of synchronicity to read something good like this to send him off on a high note.  That said, we’ll see if he’s actually sent off once I get around to reading “Axis” and the next couple of volumes.